1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of service administration and, more particularly, to user-specific contact services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Remaining in contact with others has become more prevalent over the past few years. Originally, pagers were used to contact someone in an emergency. Cellular phones, which were only used by a minority a few years ago, are now extremely prevalent and owned by a significant portion of the population. Personal digital assistants (PDA) are also becoming much more prevalent as a wireless solution that permits individuals to stay connected with wireless access to email, corporate data, phone, web and other organizer features.
Nevertheless, there are instances when individuals still are unable to connect with others. For example, the individual may be in a meeting or otherwise disposed. Alternatively, the individual may be in an area where they are unable to receive a signal from a cellular phone, PDA or the like. This is especially true for those individuals that are traveling.
As people travel, they are often out-of-touch with others for various periods of time. For example, when traveling by plane, individuals are unable to use cellular phones or any other devices to remain in contact should others need to contact the individual. Additionally, even though many planes offer phone services, an individual is not likely going to use this service if the individual believes everything to be OK and someone trying to contact the individual would have no way of calling the individual using the airplane phone system.
In addition, it may be very time-consuming and expensive for travelers to contact others prior to or immediately after embarking on a trip, such as airplane travel. If a traveler wishes to check in with a significant number of people, the traveler may not have sufficient time prior to departure. Additionally, one or more of these persons may only be available while the traveler is unavailable such that the traveler is not able to contact that person until much later.
Also, while traveling, many travelers may only wish to know whether something is wrong and not when everything is OK. However, by calling each person individually, the traveler may waste time and effort speaking to those that are fine and may never find out from other contacts whether something is wrong.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide a service to users to permit the user to remain in contact with people. It would also be beneficial to provide a service to users that would enable the user to check with multiple people while the user is unavailable. It would also be beneficial to provide a service to users that would permit users to determine in which instances the user will be contacted.